British Medals from the Collection of James Spencer

Music, LONDON, Worshipful Company of Musicians (Inc. 1500), Cobbett Medal for Services to the Art of Chamber Music, 1924, a silver-gilt award by G. Bayes for Pinches, bust of Ludwig van Beethoven left, rev. swan left, named (Spencer Dyke, F.R.A.M., 1941), 45mm (Irvine/Atterbury p.139; MJP p.231). Extremely fine and very rare; in green and gilt case of issue £60-80

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, British Medals from the Collection of James Spencer.

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Spencer Dyke, Cornish violinist, was born at St Austell on 22 July 1880. He won the Dove Scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music in London at the age of 17, and became a professor there in 1907. He was mainly concerned with chamber music, and with teaching and editing. By 1924 he had written violin pieces and studies, had published editions of the classics and a book of Scales. In October 1923, Compton Mackenzie founded the National Gramophonic Society for the recording and publication by subscription of classical music, principally chamber music, which was of limited circulation. The Spencer Dyke Quartet was by then already well-known and Dyke joined the advisory board for the selection of material for the Society, together with Walter Willson Cobbett (1847-1937), and others. Cobbett had founded the Cobbett Competition in 1905 for a short form of String Quartet composition or 'Phantasy', and for other short chamber works. The Spencer Dyke Quartet, together with various other instrumentalists in ensemble, appeared on many of the recordings made in the mid-1920s